Welcome to the 100th episode of the Happy Market Research Podcast! In this episode, Merrill Dubrow, CEO of M/A/R/C Research, interviews Jamin Brazil, Founder and CEO of Happy Market Research. The two take a look at the benefits of producing a podcast, market research trends, and life lessons.

Find Jamin Online:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Find Merrill Online:

LinkedIn

Website: M/A/R/C Research 

Find Us Online:

www.happymr.com

Social Media: @happymrxp

LinkedIn

This Episode’s Sponsor: 

This episode is brought to you by G3 Translate. The G3 Translate team offers unparalleled expertise in foreign language translations for market researchers and insight professionals across the globe. Not only do they speak hundreds of languages, they are fluent in market research. For more information, please visit them at G3Translate.com.

[00:00]

Good afternoon, everybody.  My name is Merrill Dubrow. For those of you who are tuning in to see Jamin Brazil be the host of the Happy Market Research Podcast, we’re going to change it up a little bit on today’s show, which is the 100th Podcast of the Happy Market Research Podcast.  My name is Merrill Dubrow, and I’m President and CEO of M/A/R/C Research, and I actually am going to put the host on the hot seat.  And we’re going to interview Jamin Brazil.

[00:27]    

Super excited about this.  

[00:29]

Great.  Thanks, Jamin.  As I am and everybody else.  But before we get into even a little bit of Q&A and put Jamin on the hot seat, I just want to tell everybody that this could not be made possible without G3 Translate.

[00:42]

This episode is brought to you by G3 Translate.  The G3 Translate team offers unparalleled expertise in foreign language translations for market researchers and insight professionals across the world.  Not only do they speak hundreds of languages, they are fluent in market research. For more information, please visit Nancy at G3Translate.com.

[01:10]

Jamin, how are you today, sir?  This is a big highlight for me.   

[01:14]

For me, it’s a huge highlight.  I’m super excited and honored that...  We should also level-set: Merrill has been on the show two times.  He was my very first podcast, which was published as Number 105, and then we had him on earlier this year as an update, kind of post-transaction as he acquired M/A/R/C Research.  And now, he and I have been long-standing friends in the market research industry. He said, “Hey, has anybody ever interviewed you on the show? And I’m like, “That’s never happened.  That’s crazy.” And at the same time, we’re coming up on our 100th show; in fact, this is the 100th show for the Happy Market Research Podcast.

[01:50]

Well, let me tell you something.  The pleasure is all mine. I listen to your podcast when I work out, when I drive home.  And I want to thank you for allowing the opportunity to be on, I guess, in some way for a third time.  So, let’s just get right into it. The 100th episode – Wow! – of the podcast.  Just talk a little bit about the motivation behind starting the podcast.

[02:12]   

The motivation is different than where I ended up, where I am right now, and then where I’m going with the podcast.  The challenge that I had exiting FocusVision is there’s a fair amount of restriction around what you can and can’t do in the industry.  That’s just very normal part and parcel whenever there’s a transaction; you’re partaking in that transaction selling a company. So I was fairly limited for about a year and a half after exiting the CEO role of FocusVision.  When I thought about what can I do to be able to maintain engagement and brand inside of the space, video, vlogs (really popular) that takes a lot of effort and learning. Podcasts seemed to me to be the thing that would be the fastest and easiest way for me to be able to engage with my peers and insights leaders across the space.  So, that was really where I started my journey back...

The 2019 NEXT pre-conference series is giving listeners an inside look into companies such as IBM, Voice Metrics, Ipsos, and Pulse Labs.. Join insight leaders on June 13 – 14 in Chicago for NEXT, where you can discover how technology and innovation are changing the market research industry. In this episode, Jamin Brazil interviews Stuart Crane, Founder and CEO of Voice Metrics; and Paul Cornwell, CTO of Voice Metrics.

Find Stuart and Paul Online:

Stuart's LinkedIn

Paul's Linkedin

Website: www.voicemetrics.io

[00:00]

Hi, I'm Jamin Brazil, and you're listening to the Happy Market Research podcast. This is a special episode that's connected to the upcoming Insights Association’s NEXT conference. It is located in Chicago on June 13th and 14th. I do a lot of these conferences both inside and adjacent to the market research industry. I think this particular NEXT conference is a must attend if you're interested in learning about what's coming up “next”. Maybe that's how they came up with the name. My guests today are Stuart Crane, the founder and CEO of Voice Metrics, which helps companies leverage voice, as well as Paul Cornwell. Did I say your last name right, Paul?

[00:48]

Yeah, you got it.

[00:49]

Voice metrics CTO. Guys, thanks very much for joining me on the Happy Market Research podcast today!

[00:53]

–Glad to be here.

–Yes, thanks for having us, Jamin!

[00:56]

You guys are speaking at the NEXT conference on how to integrate voice into the total customer experience. I'm really curious, given your backgrounds, when did you first recognize the voice was important?

[01:10]

Voice, I've been interested in for quite some time back in the day when I would listen to cassettes in the car and CDs in the car. I was really interesting in voice recognition:  recognizing voice with Dragon dictate, and that sort of thing. But when I realized it was really going to be big is actually when I got an Amazon Echo, I think was for Christmas in 2015, I believe, and just being able to talk to this cylinder, and have it talk back to you and start songs, and you could still talk to it while music is playing. And obviously Siri was out there. But now, it's basically an ambient voice conversation. It just blew my mind! And then I found out that you can actually write software for it. You can write programs for the Amazon Echo. Back then, it was just called Echo. Now it's obviously “Alexa”, and it's a big ecosystem and everything. So I just really recognized that being able to talk to devices and have the full features of computers behind it really is going to transform things. Not that it's going to take away the capabilities of mobile or anything like that, but supplement it in such a great way. I started looking at ways that we could program voice and got involved very early in the Alexa’s software development ecosystem and just took it from there.

[02:29]

All right, great. So Paul?

[02:31]

Yeah. So I came from an AI machine learning background prior to getting into voice, and that was sort of my segue-way into voice and where the interest came from. So actually, before I met Stuart, I was pretty hot and heavy for Alexa and the idea of building these interactive experiences. So I was looking a lot at Lex and Alexa on the Amazon side, and it just seems like a natural segue-way coming from that AI background and thinking about how these devices and experiences can be more conversational and just the technology caught up to where my head was. With the opportunity with Stuart, who had this vision, at the very beginning of what we've built, everything just seemed to align.

[03:23]

So I'm going to go ahead and share, and I apologize, I don't mean to hijack the point, but for me I recognize it was really important with my daughter and the iPhone I got her when she was 11 years old. We were driving in the car for a three hour drive, so I just started making small talk.

The 2019 NEXT pre-conference series is giving listeners an inside look into companies such as IBM, Voice Metrics, Ipsos, and Pulse Labs.. Join insight leaders on June 13 – 14 in Chicago for NEXT, where you can discover how technology and innovation are changing the market research industry. In this episode, Jamin Brazil interviews Frank Kelly, Global Head of Operational Product at Ipsos.

Find Frank Online:

LinkedIn

Website: www.ipsos.com/en

[00:01]

Hi, I'm Jamie Brazil, and you're listening to the Happy Market Research podcast. This is a special episode connected to the Insights Association’s NEXT conference, which is being held in Chicago on June 13th and 14th.

My guest today is Frank Kelly, head of Innovation and NPD at Ipsos. Now, Frank, I do have a question. I have always said Ipsos. I think it's pronounced “Ipso”, is that correct?

[00:27]

If you are French.

[00:29]

Okay.

[00:32]

For everybody else, “Ipsos" works fine.

[00:33]

Perfect. So Ipsos is a global market research and consulting firm headquartered in Paris. Founded in 1975, Ipsos is publicly traded and ranked in the world's largest market research agencies, actually number three, I believe, with offices in 88 countries and employing over 16,000 people. Prior to joining Ipsos, Frank has held senior leadership roles at Nielsen, Greenfield Online, TNS and Lightspeed/GMI. Frank, thanks so much for joining me on the Happy Market Research podcast.

[01:01]

Ah, thank you very much.

[01:04]

You’re speaking at this year's NEXT event on how to integrate voice in your total customer experience. My second episode on this particular podcast was centric to voice. I am so excited to see a conference, the first conference that I know of in our space, that is really kind of centralizing the communication around this particular medium. How did you first come to realize that voice was important?

[01:29]

If I go back maybe 8 or 10 years ago, when I started seeing people use voice to text, it dawned on me. As soon as people started using features like that, there's this bound to be an application and research, because they're just showing preference for a way to communicate. And we have to accommodate those preferences in the way that we capture data. But I guess the real big thing was certainly when Siri was introduced by Apple –I think it was 2011. That really seemed to show the promise of what you can do with voice communication. And it showed that with work eventually that could become a major component of how we collect research data.

[02:11]

Yes, for sure. You know, it's interesting 2011. I think it's September 2016 that Alexa launched. I think I have the year right. Does that sound right to you?

[02:22]

That sounds right. Yes.

[02:23]

So the big head start that Apple had inside of this space, and yet they certainly have taken a back seat from a growth perspective with Google Home now being the fastest growing voice-based platform. And obviously, Alexa. I think Alexa is still dominant.

[02:42]

Yes, well, again, a lot of people are using the Apple, the Siri on their other devices. So it's not just the voice assistant devices that we should think about because research could be captured probably more commonly through the voice assistants on the phone.

[02:59]

Right. Yes, yes, for sure. I was talking to my kids. I have a bunch of kids, some older ones and some younger ones. So the younger ones are utilizing, and this is all just organic, Alexa right now to play hide and seek. It's just really funny. Oh, Alexa, stop! Sorry. She's now going to be called “A”. No, no, stop!

So the other side of it is, my older kids were talking about how it would be really cool if they could get an audio feed that highlighted stuff coming out of their Instagram account that they could then somehow magically connect right to their phones, to get in the visual pieces there as well.

The 2019 NEXT pre-conference series is giving listeners an inside look into companies such as IBM, Voice Metrics, Ipsos, and Pulse Labs.. Join insight leaders on June 13 – 14 in Chicago for NEXT, where you can discover how technology and innovation are changing the market research industry. In this episode, Jamin Brazil interviews Ellen Kolstø, Design Principal at IBM Q.

Find Ellen Online:

LinkedIn

Website: www.ibm.com/us-en

[00:01]

Hi, I'm Jamie Brazil, and you're listening to the Happy Market Research podcast. My guest today is Ellen Kolstø, Design Principle at IBM Q. International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM, is an American multinational information technology company that is headquartered in New York, with operations in over 170 countries. In 2016, IBM launched the IBM Q Experience, which is an online platform that gives the general public access to a set of IBM's cloud based quantum computing. Ellen has hosted lectures at the University of Texas on design for artificial intelligence and has served in senior roles on both the agency and services side for companies including JWT, Young & Rubicam, Leo Burnett and BrainJuicer. Ellen, thanks for being on the Happy Market Research podcast today!

[00:49]

Happy to be here! Thank you.

[00:51]

Tell me a little bit about your background. This is kind of helpful for us because it level sets, and gives us a little bit of context of who you are.

[01:02]

Yeah, always a great question. So I started life in the agency environment as a strategic planner and so it came up through that world of account planning. I'd like to say it came over from the Mayflower, sometime in the 80s, from the British, and I grew up in that culture where it was very much about understanding customers and working with them and doing the research yourself so that you could translate that into creative strategy for communications. So I started in that world, and did that for quite a while. Then I felt that over time, the balance of the amount of research that was getting conducted shifted over to clients themselves, and they were taking on more of that in their own realms, and agencies were doing a little bit less of that. And so I found it very attractive to move into the realm of market research, where I could spend all my time conducting research, which is my favorite thing. And that is when I moved into that world and into BrainJuicer, now known as System1. I liked that environment as well because we did a lot of really innovative types of research using technology, so it combined these two worlds that I've been playing in, especially most recently. We did a lot of online ethnography and also online community. So you had a lot of tools to use and have consumers come with you for weeks and months in some cases as they work through different experiences with you, so that you could maximize products. And it was really fun, whether it was a long-term engagement, working with them on their relationship to cookies and unboxing experiences or how they selected their phone service and all that kind of fun that went along with that. So I did that for a few years, and then, I had this interesting opportunity where someone said: “Hey, IBM is looking for people with deeper search experience in what we call ‘user research and technology’”. Looking for that for Watson, specifically in the realm of AI, specifically they built up that team because Watson was new three years ago, it was just getting started, especially with the design team, and that is the group that creates the user interface and all of the tooling that our customers use to create AI themselves. I decided to go talk to them, and it was a really great experience. And I ended up there in a completely different realm: total technology, business to business, enterprise environment, but in a completely new and exciting space. And I was very energized by that. And that is how I ended up making my way to IBM throug...

The 2019 NEXT pre-conference series is giving listeners an inside look into companies such as IBM, Voice Metrics, Ipsos, and Pulse Labs.. Join insight leaders on June 13 - 14 in Chicago for NEXT, where you can discover how technology and innovation are changing the market research industry. In this episode, Jamin Brazil interviews Dylan Zwick, Chief Product Officer at Pulse Labs.

Find Dylan Online:

LinkedIn

Website: www.pulselabs.ai

[00:01]

Hi, I'm Jamie Brazil, and you're listening to the Happy Market Research podcast. This is a special episode that's connected to the Insights Association’s NEXT conference in Chicago, that is, this June 13th and 14th. My guest today is Dylan Zwick. Dylan. I said your last name, right?

[00:22]

That was correct. Yeah, Dylan Zwick. I'm always dead last in the alphabetical order.

[00:27]

That's funny. I was always first in photos because I am 5’8’’ so we have that objective position. Dylan is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Pulse Labs. Pulse Labs is a solution that enables users to launch and gather consumer opinions via voice devices such as Alexa and Google Home. Dylan, thanks for being on the Happy Market Research podcast today!

[00:49]

A pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:53]

You are speaking at this year's NEXT event on voice. When did you first realize that voice was important?

[00:57]

So I first realized that voice was going to be big back in 2016 when I bought my first Echo. So I started playing around with Alexa, and realized that what had been the dream of science fiction now for decades, you know, the ability to speak and actually have a conversation with a computer was actually becoming science fact, you know, it was it was becoming reality. And so, I played around with building my own Alexa applications and started exploring the tools that were out there for developers and designers for Alexa application, and for voice applications more generally, and realized that this was going to be a huge space and also that I really wanted to be a part of it. So that’s what got me initially involved.

[01:54]

Yeah, I mean, Alexa in and of itself is really interesting. One of the things that I think is… If you pull back, YouTube right now, I forget what the data is, something like 60% of the Internet is there. It's a massive amount. And if you look at the bet that Google placed when they did that acquisition, it was, they consolidated the different product lines into a single thing, and then they centralized the KPI to one centralized point of focus, which was the number of daily videos unloaded. And that created so much focus from an R&D perspective that that was all anybody cared about. It wasn't predicated on revenue or eyeballs or anything like that. That was it. And then subsequently, of course, that was the tail that wagged the dog. Amazon is actually doing the exact same thing with respect to Alexa. I mean, my kids… My 12-year-old can create an Alexa skill. It is crazy easy how they have made the development side of this accessible.

[02:52]

Yeah, that's been a huge focus for Amazon. And the Alexa team is to open up as many tools for developing essentially applications or, as they call them, skills, on Alexa and then, trying to provide these and encourage as many independent developers to build skills there as they can. So you have a ton of skills, actually, that have just been built by independent developers, and then also a bunch of skills that have been built by brands or professional agencies. And there are even companies out there that are focused exclusively on the building of Alexa skills. And then yeah, you've mentioned, you know, they're also very interested in providing tools that makes this as easy as possible. So you even have a blueprint tool that essentially lets you quickly create a standard but personalized skill without the need to have any programming background at all....

My guest today is Amit Ahand, Co-Founder and CEO of Nailbiter. Founded in 2014, Nailbiter is a unique platform that offers CPG manufacturers an opportunity to see their consumers make purchase decisions at the shelf and at home. Prior to starting Nailbiter, Amit has been a key executive at IRI, Catalina and Affinnova.

Find Amit Online:

LinkedIn

Website: www.nail-biter.com

Find Us Online: 

Social Media: @happymrxp

LinkedIn

This Episode’s Sponsor:

Today’s podcast is sponsored by Schlesinger Quantitative, your trusted provider of global online surveys that drive the best decisions for success in the marketplace. Schlesinger Quantitative has built an entire division of experts with extensive online research experience and an unparalleled understanding of quality drivers across panel, sample, and data.

[00:00]

On Episode 217, I’m interviewing Amit Dhand, founder and EVP of Client Services at Nailbiter, but first a word from our sponsor.

[00:01]  

Today’s podcast is sponsored by Schlesinger Quantitative, your trusted provider of global online surveys that drive the best decisions for success in the marketplace.  Schlesinger Quantitative has built an entire division of experts with extensive online research experience and an unparalleled understanding of quality drivers across panel, sample, and data.

[00:35]  

Hi, I’m Jamin Brazil.  You’re listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast.  My guest today is Amit Dhand, co-founder and CEO of Nailbiter.  Founded in 2014, Nailbiter’s unique platform that offers CPG manufacturers an opportunity to see their consumers, make purchase decisions at the shelf and at home.  Prior to starting Nailbiter, Amit has been a key executive at IRI, Catalina, and Affinnova. Amit, thanks very much for joining me the Happy Market Podcast today.

[01:07]

It’s my pleasure, Jamin, and I appreciate you doing this podcast.  I think this is very overdue in the market research business. And I look forward to the conversation; I look forward to tracking your broadcast in the future.   

[01:22]

Awesome, thanks very much.  So, I’d like to start with a little bit of your background.  Can you tell us where you grew up and a little bit about your parents and how that’s impacted where you are today?

[01:33]   

That’s a great question because I ask that question in job interviews all the time.  I grew up in India and did my undergraduate degree there. I grew up in a small- business family is the best way to describe it.  My dad, many of my mother’s siblings, they were small business owners, traders. This was in India of a different era, which was much more socialistic, much more repressive, if you will, from both a society standpoint as well as business standpoint.  So, I always saw my dad struggle, make ends meet, do well, and then get pleasure out of being an entrepreneur, I think, and also the trials and tribulations that go with it. But the one advice that he gave me consistently was to never be like him. Educate myself as much as I could and get a job in a nice, big company and be comfortable.

So that’s what I did, but I did pursue my passion, which was physics.  I didn’t do the engineering track, which is common in India if you have grades that’s what you do or medicine.  I was doing my masters in physics, and that’s when professor politely pulled me aside and said I didn’t have that much of a future in physics [He laughs.] because I didn’t have the temperament to a professor or a researcher.  Strangely, now I’m a market researcher. So, that was my journey to looking for something new. And my sister was getting her masters in the U.S. at the time. So, I was looking for what’s next. For a lot of kids in India back then was the U.S.  So I came to the U.S. for my MBA.

[03:16]

In what year was that?

[03:17]  

That was in ’96.

[03:20]

Got it, got it.

[03:21]

A different millennium.          

Welcome to the WIRe Series. Recorded live in Austin, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from the WIRe MRx Meet & Mingle event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Rebecca Brooks, Founder and CEO of Alter Agents.

Contact Rebecca Online:

LinkedIn

Alter Agents

[00:00]

My guest today is Rebecca Brooks, the CEO and founder of Alter Agents, which is a super cool name.  It’s totally like 007’s research, I think in a good way.

[00:14]   

Thank you.  

[00:14]

How are you doing?  

[00:15]

I’m good.  How are you?

[00:16]

Good.  Yeah, we’ve known each other for ages in the industry.  It’s been ages since we’ve seen each other at the same time.  

[00:20]   

I know.  It’s really good to see you.

[00:22]

So, we’re at the... live at the WIRe events today with...  in Austin with IIeX. I have not been to Austin in literally over 20 years, and the city has completely changed.  How long have you been part of WIRe?

[00:36]      

I’ve been part of WIRe...  I mean I feel like since the beginning.  I started going to the first meetings in L.A. about ten years ago, which is when it started.  And I’m really happy to be more fully engaged with the group than ever before. So, I’m the Los Angeles event lead in program.  I’m also a mentor; I’m part of the Executive Group. We’re going to our Summit next month. So it’s become a really integral part of my professional life.  I love it.

[01:04]

We’re going to dive into your business in just a minute, but I want to just focus a little bit on WIRe.  Talk to me little bit about the Mentorship Program. What sort of person are you looking for to fill that seat?  And the other side of it is the mentee. What kind of person is a good fit in that role?

[01:22]

Yeah, I think that anybody with ten plus years of experience in the industry, whether it’s all on the client or all on the supplier side, is a valuable mentor.  And really someone that will help younger women navigate the corporation world. A lot of them are trying to come up in their business. So, they’re looking to get promotions; they’re looking to get raises.  And that’s a difficult thing for anybody to navigate but especially young women, particularly if their organization is very male-dominated. So the WIRe mentors really have invaluable experience in that regard because they’ve all been successful enough to navigate that path, right?  And then, in terms of the mentees, I mean we’re really looking for women that will not only benefit from the program but that will also continue the legacy of WIRe and, in a few years, turn around and mentor themselves and that are really committed to the program.

[02:18]

It’s an important work on both sides of it.  What kind of time commitment is involved?

[02:22]

For me...  Well, I’ve been with my mentee now for two years.  

[02:26]

Wow.

[02:26]

Yeah, she had the option of leaving and going to somebody else, but she stuck with me, which was nice.  So, we talk every month. We try to do it in person if we can but schedules don’t allow that. We usually have a list of objectives that we’re going through from short-term goals to long-term goals; so, we’re always addressing those, talking about them.  And then I’m available to her if things arise. Yeah, but usually once a month.

[02:55]  

So, shift gears a little bit.  Alter Agents, tell me a little bit about what you guys do.  

[03:01]  

So, we’re a full-service market research consultancy.  We’re really methodology agnostic, vertical agnostic. We do qualitative and quantitative.  We work with large companies like Hyundai Motor America and Viking River Cruises. We work with smaller brands like Humm Kombucha and Evelyn & Bobbie.  Really what we found is that our niche isn’t in a particular type of research or with a particular type of industry, but really more around those clients that need a more consultat...

Welcome to the WIRe Series. Recorded live in Austin, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from the WIRe MRx Meet & Mingle event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Karen Lynch, Senior Director of Qualitative Insights at InsightsNow.

Contact Karen Online:

LinkedIn

InsightsNow

[00:00]

I’m here with Karen Lynch.  We are prepping for the WIRe event tethered to IIeX in Austin.  She is the Senior Director, Qualitative Insights at...

[00:12]    

Insights Now.

[00:13]

Insights Now.  There you go. This is a little-known fact.  I have participated with WIRe from the very early days when Kristin started it while working with Decipher.  And I actually stopped going to the events because I felt (and this was my Ah ha moment), I felt so uncomfortable being the only man in the room.    

[00:38]

Oh, got ya, got ya.

[00:39]

Which is a really interesting counterpoint to like last night - I went to dinner, and there were three guys and a girl.  And I’m thinking to myself, “It’s so interesting having the shoe on the other foot.” And just not having that perspective until you’re in that environment.

[00:53]   

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.  What you just talked about is what it feels like to be a minority in the room, right?  And so, in many industries, women deal with that all the time: they step into a room filled with men.  So that’s why we celebrate with Women In Research, why we celebrate women in these roles because it’s a strive for equality and strive for balance.  And the closer we get, the better it is for all of us. And your support at those sorts of events brings us closer. So, thank you for that.

[01:20]

For me, it is such an interesting head space.  The framework of business... Recently, I was reading a Harvard Business Review article and they were talking about how temperatures set in offices are set to men’s ideal temperature.

[01:37]      

Oh, that’s interesting.

[01:38]

Which is like three degrees cooler than women would prefer it to be.

[01:42]

Yeah, most likely.

[01:42]

And I thought, “Gosh, it’s like just set up in that sort of like framework of...  And I’m not trying like us versus them, us being obviously the man. So, I don’t mean it that way.  I just think there’s so much that’s built up in society that we just take for granted as sort of normal.  And then, to your point, being the only “minority” in room, really does change that dynamic. So, my point in bringing all that up is just that WIRe is an inclusive organization and it’s...  Regardless of any sort of demographic profile, you can participate whether being a supporter or even joining different events they’re putting on. It’s a great opportunity to increase your overall exposure.  Important work. So, ah, tell me Perspective Thinking: “Accessing Perspective Thinking and the Impact on Research Product Development.” What in the world is that?

[02:43]

What are we talking about?  So, in market research we’ve been talking a lot about implicit, explicit testing over the years.  We talk a lot about System 1 versus System 2, thinking that there’s only two ways of thinking and two ways of making decisions.  For those of you listening that don’t necessarily know the difference there, it’s as simple as something in System 1 might be a quick, automatic decision like “Hey, I’m going to grab the gallon of milk that has the red cap ‘cause I know that’s whole milk.”  You don’t have to think much about it; it’s pretty automatic. And then there’s System 2, which is like, “Now I need to buy a car.” And you just don’t grab one off the shelf. You sit and you think and you’re deliberate about it. And those two modes of thinking are at play with every consumer decision that’s made, but what they don’t account for is the imagination.  And so say, you wear glasses. So say, you’re in the frame shop and you’re trying on different lenses and you’re letting your...

Welcome to the WIRe Series. Recorded live in Austin, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from the WIRe MRx Meet & Mingle event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews John Martin, Founder and CTO of Measure Protocol.

Contact John Online:

LinkedIn

Measure Protocol

[00:02]

John Martin, Chief Technology Officer, Measure Protocol.  Thanks for being on the Happy Market Research Podcast.

[00:08]    

My pleasure, my pleasure.

[00:08]

So, we’re at the WIRe event, part of...  connected to the IIeX Austin events. What are your thoughts so far regarding IIeX?  

[00:16]

I mean it’s fantastic.  To be honest, I haven’t been there yet today.  I flew in.

[00:20]

You just got in.

[00:22]   

But I was just checking my Bizzabo app trying to pick out all of the...

[00:26]

Connections?

[00:28]      

Yeah, and all of the sessions tomorrow that I’m going to go to.  Looks like there’s a bunch of System 1 stuff, which is super interesting; a bunch of Big Data stuff, which is interesting.  So, yeah, it’s a really good lineup this year.

[00:38]

CTO of Measure Protocol.  Tell me a little bit about Measure Protocol.  What do you guys do?

[00:41]

So, we’re doing sampling on the blockchain.  So, we started life about 18 months ago right, I guess, at the height, of blockchain madness, of ICO madness, and started working on this idea that we just couldn’t run away from.  You know two out of three of us founders had a background in market research, had worked at Comscore and Kantar, and had another startup, which was a market research startup that we’d exited awhile ago.  And the deeper we got into blockchain, the more we just could not run away from how perfect a fit we thought that it was for this one particular use case that we knew so much about, given our history. And so, we’ve been sort of digging away at it for the past 18 months.

[01:26]

Your executive team, Ben?  Is that right?

[01:28]

Owen and Paul.

[01:30]

Owen and Paul.  Sorry about that.  And you guys have had a successful exit, which is really unique, especially in the context of blockchain since the very early stages of that whole technology.  What are you seeing as the central role or, even more specifically, the practical role of blockchain in market research? What is the problem that it’s solving?    

[01:54]

Right.  I think it’s going to end up coming on in two different phases.  When I think about what we’re doing, which is just quite literally putting sampling on the blockchain.  So, instead of a sample provider being in the middle of a researcher and a population of respondents, there’s software on a blockchain, which is not to say that we’re disintermediating all the sample companies, right?  It’s just to say that, from a technical perspective, this stuff is possible to be done in software alone. But, when I think about what we’re doing, there’s sort of three buckets of benefits: privacy, transparency, and economics.  And I think with the current state of the cryptocurrency market, the economics argument is somewhat off the table, right?

There’s this sort of really interesting, idealistic, futuristic business models that are possible when you have a cryptocurrency in the middle of these things where users become, to a certain extent, shareholders of what you are building, which is super interesting and can sort of inspire all of these accelerating positive feedback loops.  But, because of the crypto-markets now, that’s not as easily possible to get off the ground, but it certainly should be possible in the future. What we focus on today is privacy and transparency. So it really forces us to build essentially a sample company that is private by design and is... essentially has a sort of 24/7, 365-day year audit on what we’re doing.  So buyers of data and respondents can all see the providence of offers, can see payments go through,

Welcome to the WIRe Series. Recorded live in Austin, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from the WIRe MRx Meet & Mingle event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Horst Feldhaeuser, Group Services Director (SVP) at Infotools.

Contact Horst Online:

LinkedIn

Infotools

[00:00]

Horst, the Group Services Director at InfoTools.  It is an honor to have you on this show. I’ve been following you guys for quite a while.  Tell me a little bit about the business.

[00:13]   

Well, InfoTools is a company that’s been around for 28 years now, based in New Zealand, but we have offices all around the world.  And we do everything from the data to the delivery to the people: so data analysis, data harmonization, dashboarding, socialization, all that kind of stuff.  

[00:31]

So, the gamut.

[00:32]

The gamut, yes.  Apart from the data collection, we do it.

[00:36]

No kidding.

[00:36]   

And we’re good at it.

[00:37]

Yeah, yeah, good.  So, 29 years is a storied brand in our space.  What kind of technologies have you guys built out as InfoTools?  

[00:46]      

Yeah, so, we’ve started off with a desktop tool basically to analyze the data as our first step, and then gradually over the years, obviously, we’ve moved into the cloud.  So, our biggest tool is now the cloud-based called InfoTools Harmoni. It’s been used by big companies like Coca-Cola, or Unilever (no, not Unilever, sorry), Orange, Shell, Samsung, and more and more market research companies as well.  So it’s really a tool for DIY or for the services…

[01:12]

Well, we’ll have to get this podcast in front of Unilever so they can be a customer also.

[01:15]

Yeah, exactly, they should be.  

[01:17]

So, you guys have teamed up with the University of Auckland Business School to help give students in market research some hands-on experience.  Tell me a little bit about that.

[01:27]

Yeah, that’s really a great partnership with them, and we’ve been in contact with them for a long time.  They’ve been very close with the market research industry in New Zealand, and they have a market research competition since about 2011, where they have students working on real-life projects and there is literally it’s like a “Market Research Got Talent” thing with a competition, with judges from the market research industry and from the client side.  They’re doing a lot with not-for-profit studies, and this year it’s with a corporation called Housing New Zealand Housing Foundation. We decided with our new cloud-based tool why not give it to them for free and have them use that instead of some of the other tools that we don’t think are quite as funky.

[02:11]

That’s pretty cool.

[02:12]

That’s very cool.  And we just started the project.  We just had a big training session with them with their previous data, and once they get the new data in, they can play around with it.  And we absolutely love it; they love it.

[02:23]  

It’s a big upstream opportunity, right?  We had one of the plays that Qualtrics took early on in their career.  I wouldn’t say that it was necessarily strategic. In those days it was just like available, kind of like Facebook.  And it worked out profoundly well for them from a customer-adoption perspective. Is that part of the thinking? I’d imagine it would have to be.

[02:40]  

Yeah, I can neither deny nor confirm it, and we thought about that.  But, absolutely, I mean we want to support the students. And it’s great for us working in our background at home in New Zealand first, but we definitely want to go globally with that and approach universities across the world.  So, if they want to get in contact with us, absolutely.

[02:57]

I think there’s Georgia Tech and Michigan State that are here at this particular conference, both of which have market research-centric masters programs.

[03:04]  

We’ll be talking to them,